(AFTER A HINDUSTANI SONG)
Farewell, fairest of loves!
Life's most fanciful of gifts,
Joy and treasure, love and wonder,
Waking's elusive reality,
Dream's ever-yielding divinity.
Even thou must pass
Beyond time's starless bar:
Thy eyes, their lambent flames
Shall no more illumine my night;
Nor thy brow, home of many moods,
Tranquil yet tormented as a sea,
Shall ever wear the coronal of my kiss.
Ah, kisses! blisses of fire,
Passion's long lingering melody
Played by thy lips on mine.
Even they must die—
Intangible realities of rapture,
Ever present wonders of desire—
Now like autumn leaves
Fly with the west-wind of fear.
No, not fear that takes thee from me,
Nor love's slayer, satiety;
Yet art gone; thou art going.
Oh, not to crush thy heart on mine:
Thy breasts made but for my hands,
No more to quiver in rapture therein!
Who wills this cruel decree?
The warmth of thy body,
The staggering storm of thy yielding,
The intoxicating perfume of thy mouth:
These, and many other endless
Viols and lutes of passion, love, life,
Delights of a thousand heavens,
Who robs them of me?
Fate! that fool in the court of love,
Who hath no wit for laughter,
Steals it all from me
In the mid-hour of life;
And as it befits his mind,
Scatters it all over the turbid
Stream of fear and lies.
65
SATIETY
All thy gifts must die,
All thy thoughts must fail;
Such were the decree writ by time
With shadows on the scroll of fate.
Even thy memory recedes into forgetting,
Thy lustrous words star-like set,
Ah, sweet! autumn's breath withers all,
Even the west-wind fears to tread.
All yield to the power of relentless time
That no love nor passion can stay,
Blown like dried leaves we now
On the granite pavement of fate.
No more thy lip-touch on my brow,
Nor thy hands pleading caresses,
Thy gifts fall and fade into nothing,
Thy vision grows dim in life's sunset-west.
66
Drowsy the noonday air,
Under the trees the still shadow
Like a fugitive fragment of night
Seeks shelter from the sun.
The bird has ceased singing,
The beggar unable to bear
The wealth of the sun
Spreads his torn garment,
To find peace in
The benign shadow of sleep.
Ah, lone soul like him,
I spread this rag of my song.
Under the tree of life
Over which blazes the sun of fate.
The calm of its shadow
Protects me, but where my peace?
67
CHATTERTON
For summers seventeen
This flower of spring
Scattered fragrance
That dwelt in its petals seventeen.
Seventeen song-hours,
A heart never weary;
A soul with honey of all flowers
A song as enchanting as stars.
A boy never grown old,
A lute never tiring to sing,
A mind ne'er chilled
Though Hunger's hand lay cold.
Steely-cold on his breast,
Yet the boy sang;
Loved as alone a poet can
Endlessly, without rest.
Just seventeen!
Ne'er old, though time passes;
A golden lyre-string
Has not yet ceased ringing:
Rings through the heart of time
O'er the summit of death
To the music of the Nine
Into the heart of Eternal Rhyme.
68
A summer song it was,
Counting of many unseen stars
In an intangible sky
Making new milky ways—
Silver-shadow-paths that lead
From sapphire abysses
Into deeper abysses still.
The deeps of our souls
Lit by passion's burning flowers
Tremulous, timorous flames of silver,
That with thousand hands
Our hearts sought to pluck and scatter,
Or make barbéd garlands
For love's nuptial hour.
Nuptial hour, briefer than a moment,
Longer than Heaven's Eternal summer,
When each flower burns to soothe,
And each soothing petal burns anew;
Till myriad streams of fire
Strewn with countless flaming stars
Bear us to the far sea of Time
Where no summer dies,
Nor endure the stinging moments of love's winter.
69
"WHO KNOWS"
Time's torment,
Life's woes,
And sorrow's wan gaze
Are but shades
In a picture of light
Where nothing abides,
All things fade.
In fading there is beauty,
By shedding tears
We bathe our hearts—
Those crushed flowers full of smart—
For a deity not far from our souls.
Yet, no solace in prayer,
Pain has no largess;
Dark has stars,
But no barren earth its flowers.
All are dismal and fallow;
Yet, from the mountain's stony heart
Spring multitudinous rivers
Sparkling at dawn, and
Deepening night's gloom with mysterious murmurs;
And who knows?
These streams that pass
By the balcony of our past,
Through present's wilderness,
Into desolate future
May reach the land of the farthest star.
Who knows? Ah! who knows?
May these song-rills
From my heart's little hill
Empty their singing waters
Into a sea of song-making
Where nothing endures
But the sound and echo of singing.
Where sound, and echo are one,
A moonset vale of sunset land,
Where light is wedded to shade
Without death, full of dying, yet not dead.
70
THE FIRST VISION
The impenetrable dark—
Darkness of cloud and night
Coming on black silent wings
Surround me in their folds,
As it sits by my side on the shore of time.
No fear, no sorrow, no hope,
Not even the footfall of a star;
Dim, deep sable tones
Rise from the organ of nothing
With its flats and sharps of clouds and night.
Ripples of moments
Waves of hours and years
Break on the shore of space
To speak vague, soundless words
To my soul, alone, shade among shades.
Not even the unheard whisper
Of the shadow of a breeze,
But silence ponderous, peaceful,
Afraid of its own self
A mute hound at my feet.
Who art thou?
Whom do I know in this emptiness?
Who has lived with me?
And called me from the deeps of time?
Recedes the bank of space;
Fades away even the unfilled time,
No light, no sound, not even a dream;
Yet who speaks through silence?
Who plays this music of night?
Like an intangible river it flows
With waves of shadow-sound
Between banks of mountainous silence—
O, who! who are you?
Light in a world of shadows,
Rainbow among sunless clouds,
Bark of song on this sea of silence,
O ferryman of the soul!
O Word on Infinite's scroll.
71
SHANTI[5]
Sleep shadows, sleep light;
Sleep tune, sleep speech;
Sleep night, sleep day;
Sleep children in the cradle of rest.
Dream stars, dream moon;
Dream sea; dream O, sun;
Dream rainbow, dream storm;
Dream rain, O, milk from Heaven's breast.
Rest ye feet, rest ye hands;
Rest bleeding hours of even;
Rest O, heart torn and burnt,
Rest my fancies, day is done.
Sleep night, sleep with star-eyes closed;
Sleep sorrow in death's silent repose;
Sleep O, Soul, be it twilight or morn;
Sleep thou too, O, sleep, heedless of moon and sun.
[5] Shanti is the Sanskrit for "Peace."